The proliferation of cellular phones and other mobile devices with phone capabilities has led to a ring tone and answer tone business where companies compete to provide ring tones and answer tones. Currently, the ring tone and answer tone market is as much as $1 billion dollars per year. There are several known techniques for getting a new answer tone.
For a user to obtain a new answer tone, the user can often browse on a computer or the mobile device to a particular website from which the user can search for and select an answertone. Once the user has selected the answer tone, the user pays for the new answer tone and enters the phone number of the user's mobile device. Once the purchase is complete, the website assigns the answer tone to the phone number entered in the previous step.
A user currently has no ability to customize their answer tone. The user must choose from a set of precut audio clips and assign it as their answer tone. The user is unable to use a website or application to customize an answer tone. Thus, it is desirable to provide an apparatus and method that permits an answer tone to be customized.
In the prior art, when a first user calls the telephone of a second user, an intermediary device (such as the central office equipment or server for traditional telephones or the wireless carrier's server for mobile devices) will generate the answer tone that is sent to the first user's telephone electrically and that the first user audibly hears through the telephone. That answer tone is chosen by the entity that controls the intermediary device, typically the local telephone company or the wireless carrier. The answer tone in the prior art typically was a ringing sound. More recently, certain wireless carriers allow users to choose an answer tone from a catalog of sounds preselected by the wireless carrier. However, the prior art systems do not allow users to use as an answer tone an audio or video clip that the user created or to modify the answer tones contained in the wireless carrier's catalog.